OliviaDee

i don't think so. not enough gold? do gold finches have red heads? (that page is missing out of my ancient little observer's book of birds) hence the post...

sacred heart of the divine. where can i get one? i also want one of these... a royal wedding sick bag. if anybody knows where they're selling them and i believe there's a NZ stamp with will and whatsername which is perforated down the middle and is first class on one side and second class on the other!

tayto

i had two beautiful birds in my garden today. finch size and shape so i'm guessing some kind of finch... with bright red skull caps and big flashes on yellow on their wings. anyone know what they are?

joowels might have something there

i spent 100 quid on my kid's scooter cos now i can get her to school in 7 mins as opposed to 20 - well worth it. we have had cheaper ones and they do fall apart and are also much more cumbersome for a 4 year old - she doesn't have to be persuaded on to her maxi. it is considered an essential item - but the cost of it and the need to care for it was stressed to the child. there now. does that satisfy all the people on here who think some of us flippant and silly and indulgent parents? probably not...

that's a bit mean to bawdynan. a six year old is old enough to get their own hundred quid's worth of scooter in the door surely. my four year old also got a black micro maxi with obligatory elastic bands nicked from the school bike shed. That really pissed me off.

i want a wife.

talk to them before you dob them in! maybe they're lovely people in a bit of diff (there but for the grace of god...) and really just don't need any more trouble. who knows?

yay! guinness for breakfast anyone?

take something stronger than calpol and then come back. you're good value!

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > In all experience, everywhere, overlordship breeds > discontent and rebellion, not acquiescence and > malaise. - Quite. So why not in this case? That's my point exactly. The irish rebelled for centuries against 'overlordship' (interesting choice of word). But post-Famine, and after near full decimation this, understandably, stopped.(Bar the North - but if you want to go from the famine to northern ireland - you're on your own Mockney!) and i think this lies at a good part of the root of recent irish behaviour - both the greed of the boom and the paralysis of the bust. > > It wasn't the English who defeated the Irish, it > was the church. - Really? Huge generalisation there. The english were completely innocent then? If you want someone to blame, look > a little closer to home. - For about the 5th time - i am not looking for someone else to blame. i am interested in why the irish pysche seems to have altered so much in the last 150 years - to the point that in its current inert state we have brought huge calamity upon ourselves. My mother in law asked of me the other day, > without so much as a hint of irony or sadness, 'so > piers' she said 'do you think now times are bad, > people will return to the church'. The sense of > glee was irrepressible. -Bless her. -but she has a point. Pre-famine, irish catholicism was still very much intwined with paganism, matriarchy, keening, celtic gods, fertility rites, superstition, all that, and was expressed in the native tongue. Sexuality was expressed openly. Divorce was was quite widely practised and provision made for it in the legal system. the religion was bent to them, and yes, many of the church did not like it - but it expressed the people and damned if they were going to do it any other way. Then came the Famine and your MIL is right. The people had already tried turning to their 'overlords' for all the good it did them, and did indeed then turn to the church. 100s of sons and daughters took up the cloth and that is how and when the church largely got its stranglehold. and goes some way to expalining why this - 'It wasn't the English who defeated the Irish, it was the church' is such a generalisation. > The 19th century saw the church, who had always > seen the Irish flavour of Catholicism as > difficult, as an opportunity to tie in a sense of > identity and nationalism with a strict version of > worship reserved for Ireland. It was very > successful and managed to galvanise, in many ways, > a united national self image and destiny, > something tellingly in ireland's quest for > self-determination, no one had hitherto achieved. But I would say from personal experience, that > that particular breed of Catholicism was too much > and has coloured everything else in th country and > better explains the traits you describe. > >-Yes. Absolutely. and sowed the seeds for church and state to be so catastrophically entwined. and the fact that the people no longer see the church, or wish to see the church, as so intrinsic a part of our national identity, i think is adding to the apathy. Because there is nothing yet to fill that void. i think this partly fuelled the greed of the Celtic Tiger. It wasn't just an ecomonic boom it was a chance at a new identity. we were no longer the 'niggers of europe.'(Roddy Doyle - not me). It seemed like a chance for a new definition of ourselves, optimism, absence of fear. suddenly people wanted to emmigate TO ireland! even the diaspora was coming home. we were the third richest soemthing or other. there was pride again (albeit, at its cheapest, expressed in consumerism). then it all went tits up and that is why i think the bust is as much of a pyschic shock one as an economic one. because in the past we had the church and a stronger sense of a national identity to cling to during past failures, now it is as if there is nothing, and that is leading to futility and despair and inertia. and the causes needs to be probed for the people to motivate themselves again. (and not as a blame-laying excercise) > > > The good news is the grip lessens with each > generation, and fingers crossed, my mother in > law's vision for Ireland won't be realised. > -no need to cross your fingers. that ireland is dead and gone. thank god. > And what's with that weird tolling bell death hour > on the telly??!?! Freaks me out every time. - Freaks me out too. i love it.

i'm on it clare.

i'd love a job where i can bring my 6 month old and three year old. and can my granny come too? i might have to look after her too soon.

the real spideal i'm very familiar with - probably the number one gaeltacht in the country where the language is strong and even flows from the lips of the german blow-ins, bless them. and it serves my argument well. just try and imagine if during a very few short years in the 1840s, in england, 2/3s of the population was wiped out and you woke up and found yourselves speaking, say french. (except for a few thousand people in pockets of, say Norfolk and Nunhead, who managed to hold on to the language of shakespeare et al). Just try and imagine it. what that would do to the nation's pysche and confidence and sense of self. and how that still might be manifesting itself today. i think it would be a very different england. i took great care in my posts to lay blame for recent irish behaviour at irish feet where it firmly belongs but i am really really interested in why this behaviour? it is not so difficult for me to fathom the greed of the boom years based on what i said earlier but i find it really difficult to figure out why on earth no reactive party or person has risen out of the current mess to lead us? or why the protests and rallies have been so minimal when there is so much to protest about? why the ballot is full of more of the same? it's mind boggling. and just look through irish history and its hard to disagree that that passivity/inertia/malaise is not native. i think it's interesting and important to ask why this has occurred because i don't think anything is going to improve otherwise - same as any systemic failure. i can't fault any of mockney's argument except that i don't think me saying that ireland is possibly still suffering fallout from the black years is 'indicative of victim syndrome'. i'm saying i think the fallout is still falling and manifesting itself now in a people who have really lost their way. and knowing how and why you got lost is your best shot of getting unlost.(And i brought this whole thing up only as a retort to sean suggesting there are those in ireland who think we might be better off under british rule again. perhaps a few paisleyites might embrace that but you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who would go back to it - no matter what the mess we've made - at least it's our own mess). you also suggest a bit of soul searching mockney - i agree -it's what this is. the REAL problems in ireland are not economic. yes we're economically fucked. so are lots of countries. and it doesn't matter what party gets in in that sense cos yes ???? the irish bottom belongs to germany and the economy will not recover for a very long time no matter who is slapping it. but what's really hurting now in the people, and anyone whose been there recently will likely agree, is the loss of sense of self. i'm just suggesting that that was lost a longer time ago. (i'm going to get f**king crucified)

???? - you think britain owns it own ass?

mockney - 90 years is not really a long time - it fact it makes the republic quite a relatively young country. i am not suggesting that anyone else is to blame for the mess we got ourselves into - we did that ourselves. you ask 'why should it result in a greed driven housing bubble?!' and i, and many others would proffer, that for a country for whom emigration is a fact of life and the famine only just passed beyond living memory there was an absolute frenzy of grab while you can - bugger the consequences - for the first time i'll actually have something! still not excusable behaviour but that and the irish passivity ???? refers to are considered to be symptoms of post colonial malaise. many people in ireland, as here, refuse for different reasons, to even acknowledge the famine, but not so very long ago 2/3 of the population were extinguished one way or another, an entire language wiped out, and a culture and way of being with it. a rebellious people became repressed. quite frankly the irish are a race who don't really know who they are - their link with their own recent past was so severely broken. and i think that lies at the root of a lot of what we are seeing there today. god this is getting heavy.

why not mockney?

jesus sean i never ever heard that sentiment expressed. not once. not even as a very bad taste joke. yes the county's in tatters but the sentiment i most heard expressed is that post-colonial malaise played its part in that.

poor oul ireland. hope today doesn't hurt too much. a country held together by hail marys and safety pins.

to Marmora Man poverty is not soley income related. when you cut resources to the less well off you incur poverty-induced exclusion from society and there is undeniable link between this and criminal behaviour.

what makes you think we would vote FF?

Recession - what happens when my friends lose their jobs. Depression - what happens when i lose mine. Recovery - what happens when bankers and the royal family lose theirs.

just checked out that e-bay link. so what exactly is the point of having local charity stores at all - if all they want to do is sell the crappier stuff (and it really is in St C's) to their actual customers and auction the better stuff on-line where they do not have to pay Lordship Lane overheads?

yip. they simply never have decent children's stuff and i know they are given plenty. shame - they would sell plenty round here too.